The Special Court has decided to release Merxhan Çelik from prison, accused of being part of a criminal group that allegedly embezzled millions of euros through call center scams. Çelik, who was arrested in Abu Dhabi in 2024 after two years on the run, will remain under house arrest.
The decision was taken on November 9, 2026 by judge Erjon Çela, who accepted the request presented by Çelik on September 2 for the replacement of the security measure. According to the decision of the GJKKO, Çelik is not allowed to leave his apartment, while his immediate release from detention has been ordered, unless he is kept there for some other security measure or sentencing decision.
Çelik was wanted as part of an international investigation into a fraud scheme through call centers, which allegedly caused millions of euros in damage to citizens. He was arrested in 2024, thanks to the exchange of information between the Albanian police, Interpol and the authorities in Abu Dhabi, and then extradited to Albania.
The scheme was discovered in November 2022, during an international operation led by Eurojust, Europol and the Spanish Guardia Civil, in cooperation with SPAK. The authorities discovered 15 call centers, of which six were located in Albania, while the others were located in Georgia, Ukraine and North Macedonia.
The employees of these call centers contacted citizens, mainly from European Union countries, presenting themselves as cryptocurrency investment brokers. They promised large profits in exchange for relatively small initial sums.
But the money that citizens thought they were investing was allegedly embezzled by the criminal group. According to the data published about this scheme, the number of people cheated is counted in thousands, while the damage caused amounted to about 50 million euros in each quarter.
